In my study of literature I have determined that almost every master work that I have read possesses, to one degree or another, the following traits—

n                   Magnificent Prose

n                   Symbolic Characters

n                   Mythic Delineation

n                   Mythic Structure

n                   Specificity

I will now delineate each quality as clearly is possible—

The concept of Magnificent Prose is self-explanatory, and yet the most difficult to achieve. Only those blessed with a refined talent can produce beautiful, scintillating and effervescent prose. And remember that I am referring to refined talent, talent that has been perfected through years of study and practical application. Magnificent Prose includes word choice, proper metaphor, turn of phrase, and all the specifics of beautiful writing that the reader finds in the best written works. Shakespeare was the best at it; James Joyce was also a master. Joseph Conrad achieved this spectacularly in “Heart of Darkness”. The benefit of writing in Magnificent Prose is that it lends itself to representative translation from one language to the next.

Symbolic Characters possess two qualities which at no time may fail one another if the Masterpiece is to remain cohesive. The first, a uniqueness of being that clearly defines the identity of the character in his place, time, and circumstance; and the second, a Jungian wholeness of quality that may be identified as the Seeker, the Mother, the Warrior, the King, the Maiden, the Beast, or etc.. The symbolic reality of the character can take any number of mythic incarnations, but must be consistent, and must never be revealed except by inference of action and belief. On the surface the character is a person, a whole being represented by past history, present stature, and logical motivation. But below the surface the character is a type which describes any one of a variety of spiritual realities that we know as suprahuman.

Mythic Delineation refers to the application of a mythic act (journey, search, love affair, pilgrimage, sacrifice or etc.) onto the specifics of the concrete reality of the story. In whatever time and in whatever setting the story takes place, the action of the story itself is delineated by familiar mythic themes. An example can be found in the case of the novel Ulysses where Joyce overlays the perils of Odysseus onto the contemporary story of Harold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus. Mythic Delineation need not be limited to known examples, but can also be found in any exalted act of human beings in relation to their world.

Mythic Structure goes beyond the simple definition of story conflict—the very composition of the story and its execution must follow the patterns of myth and fable. While Mythic Delineation provides the mythic sources the story reflects, Mythic Structure directs the writer as to how to arrange the execution of events in the story to reflect the qualities of events that take place in mythic sources. Again, using Ulysses as an example, the funeral that Bloom attends represents a descent into Hades, and etc. The storm that rages as Shakespeare’s King Lear goes mad represents in physical terms the maelstrom of the tortured mind, and etc. Mythic Structure and Mythic Delineation work closely together to create an archetypal representation of human life in ordinary terms. For instance (and despite his protestations to the contrary) Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea presents an aged character in the timeless battle of humanity’s ingenuity, strength and resolve against the unrelenting forces of nature (and, beyond nature, the opinions of other human beings). So ancient is the mythic structure of this story that it strikes a response in every human being who has ever tried to control his or her fate in the world.

Specificity may be the most difficult quality for the potential writer of the Masterpiece to accept, because it requires him to eschew all thoughts of loftiness in setting and costume, and to present his story in one complete and absolutely consistent place in time. The Masterpiece takes place in a specific time and place, with characters familiar to that time, and settings and circumstances common to that time. The inclusion of external literary posits must be directly relational to the story, or else the reality of the story fails and the work fails to retain the unity of the Masterpiece. Inconsistency in this case destroys the unity of the work, and disqualifies the story from the category. And so the most mythic American novel ever written, Moby Dick, places its characters firmly in the contemporary world of whalers, seaman and merchants of that nineteenth century New England reality even as it tells a story of Symbolic Characters frozen in the Mythic Structure of an unrelenting archetypal experience.

That Moby Dick is an American literary masterpiece is no accident. A work of fiction possessing the above qualities and executing them in fictional prose to near-perfection can be known as nothing else.

These are the qualities that I believe are missing in today’s fiction, literary or otherwise.

And please don’t misunderstand these qualities as being the product of an elitist imagination – I believe them to be present, as I stated above, to one degree or another in every recognized literary masterpiece, regardless of subject matter, age, or cultural origin. The stories that possess these qualities are not lofty exercises in epistemology and esthetics – they are, for the most part, stories of people facing the dilemmas of their lives, which is basic dramatic reality.

When a writer attempts to combine these Qualities of the Masterpiece with a given school of artistic philosophy then the possibility of succeeding becomes phenomenally slight. That is why a conscientious application of intelligence and study needs to be applied to the work of the writer aiming for that far distant star. Each aspect of his or her ability must be examined, refined and carefully applied to that end. And, no, I don’t believe that every writer has the ability (no matter how much labor they put into the process) to create a literary masterpiece, just as not every professor of mathematics has the ability to discover magnificent proofs. It is, on the whole, a very difficult goal to achieve, and not every writer is willing to sacrifice that much time and that much effort in the hope that they will be able to achieve the improbable. But for those who are willing to devote their lives to the possibility I humbly offer my encouragement and admiration. It is only in this way that American fiction will surpass its current state of mediocrity, produce great literary works, and provide the environment for the delivery of an American literary masterpiece.